Microsoft Build Keynote: "Reimagining Windows"

Microsoft formally unveiled Windows 8 this morning at its Build conference. Steven Sinofsky, president of the company’s Windows and Windows Live division, said that Windows 8 "reimagines Windows," from the chipset to the experience.

Microsoft formally unveiled Windows 8 this morning at its Build conference. Steven Sinofsky, president of the company’s Windows and Windows Live division, said that Windows 8 “reimagines Windows,” from the chipset to the experience. “Everything that runs on Windows 7 runs on Windows 8,” which he said was a bold choice.

Windows 8 is running as well on ARM as on x86 architectures, and Sinofsky said all the demos will be the same on either platform. The demos focused on the Windows 8 Experience, building for the “Metro” style platform and the tools, the hardware platform, and cloud services.

Sinofsky talked about how the world of computing is changing. Touch has become a new user experience, and it is important in all sizes of computing, including desktops. Mobility means you can use a device while carrying it, not just while stationary. Application developers want rich connectivity and sharing capabilities, and services are intrinsic in all software.

Sinofsky opened with a 1 GB Lenovo netbook, which he used to demo Windows 7 when it came out, that used 404MB of memory and 32 processes on Windows 7 SP1, but only 281MB of memory and 29 processes on Windows 8.

Microsoft’s Julie Larson-Green, vice president for program management, did the “experience demo” revealing a new login screen with a picture-based (touch-based) password.

The Start screen unifies the old launch menu, task menu, and notifications, Sinofsky said. It looks very different, with all of the applications visible in multiple pages of tiles that are easy to customize. You can also pinch in the screen to see all of the tiles at once.

It all seems touch-focused, including the control panel. Larson-Green showed off a touch-based word scramble game, a news reader, and a social network application—all of which were “Metro” interfaces. You swipe from the left of the screen to bring up new applications or from the right to bring up settings. You can dock multiple applications on the screen at once.

It uses Internet Explorer 9, with a “chromeless” view. (Sinofsky joked about “a completely Chrome-free browsing experience.”) You can also pin specific web sites. The browser bar now sits on the bottom of the screen, a most unusual change.

Charms, another new feature, consist of little utilities that can work with multiple applications. One of these was Share, a new way of letting you share information among multiple applications, or to send links via e-mail or social network. Spell check now works throughout the system.

Search, another charm, makes the content of any application searchable, in addition to files and the Internet. So for instance, when you search, you can also recover tweets on that topic.

Multiple applications seem to work together in a particularly powerful way. When you post to Twitter, there might be integration with photos, either locally or stored within another website, which Sinofsky called a “web of apps.”

Larson-Green said her demos were done on an x86 machine, and then Sinofsky pulled out an ARM-based tablet that did the same things.

Overall, the experience is clearly touch-based, aimed at immersive, full-screen applications, with an emphasis on collaborative applications. The demos didn’t look perfect—it is just a preview version, after all—but did look fast.

Windows 7 approaches 450 million copies, and now has greater consumer usage than Windows XP. Since it went out, Sinofsky said, Microsoft has released 1,502 non-security changes to Windows 7. More than 542 million people now use the company’s Windows Live services each month.

Michael J. Miller's Forward Thinking Blog: forwardthinking.pcmag.com
Michael J. Miller is chief information officer at Ziff Brothers Investments, a private investment firm. From 1991 to 2005, Miller was editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, responsible for the editorial direction, quality and presentation of the world's largest computer publication.
Until late 2006, Miller was the Chief Content Officer for Ziff Davis Media, responsible for overseeing the editorial positions of Ziff Davis's magazines, websites, and events. As Editorial Director for Ziff Davis Publishing since 1997, Miller took an active role in...
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